Is Cannabis More Dangerous Than Alcohol? Let’s Ask Bigfoot

Alex Berezow, a regular contributor to USA Today‘s opinion page, is the editor of Real Clear Science and the author of Science Left Behind. So you would expect that when he addresses Barack Obama’s recent remarks about cannabis, he would bring a scientific perspective to them. Well–kind of.

The science isn’t settled on the issue. The long-term effects of marijuana use are largely unknown. His speculative statement, therefore, lacks scientific credibility.

Really? That’s what science says? Because the Centers for Disease Control says “there are approximately 88,000 deaths attributable to excessive alcohol use each year in the United States.” Whereas the British Medical Journal (9/18/03) says, “Although the use of cannabis is not harmless, the current knowledge base does not support the assertion that it has any notable adverse public health impact in relation to mortality.”

It’s true that more research has been done on the health effects of alcohol than on cannabis. But to assert that science might someday discover tens of thousands of annual marijuana-related deaths that have somehow so far escaped medical notice is like saying that someday science might discover proof of Bigfoot in the remaining wilderness areas of the Northwest: They’re both far-fetched hypotheticals that have nothing to do with science.

Of course, making unscientific claims about Bigfoot can maybe get you published in the Weekly World News. Making unscientific claims about cannabis gets you a column in USA Today.

Extra! Magazine Editor Since 1990, Jim Naureckas has been the editor of Extra!, FAIR's monthly journal of media criticism. He is the co-author of The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error, and co-editor of The FAIR Reader: An Extra! Review of Press and Politics in the '90s. He is also the co-manager of FAIR's website. He has worked as an investigative reporter for the newspaper In These Times, where he covered the Iran-Contra scandal, and was managing editor of the Washington Report on the Hemisphere, a newsletter on Latin America. Jim was born in Libertyville, Illinois, in 1964, and graduated from Stanford University in 1985 with a bachelor's degree in political science. Since 1997 he has been married to Janine Jackson, FAIR's program director. You can follow Jim on Twitter at @JNaureckas.

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Ok so the science proves there are many mortalities because of alcohol, an inarguable fact.
Has anyone done a study on how many “stoners” are walking around not being productive, sitting around smoking dope and living off “the man”? Sure alcohol kills, horribly injures both the person and their family. But we all know some dope-smokers that we really wouldn’t ask them to do anything technical or critical to our lives. It’s just a more subtle kind of debilitating than alcohol. You can’t see the hard obvious effects as in alcohol but it still ruins lives and families just as well just not as noticible. It’s the difference between a gunshot wound or a virus, one is more noticible the other more insidious but both just as deadly!

THC stays in the body longer and accumulates many in the fat tissues of the lungs and brain.

Alcohol for public consumption has been purified and monitored THC has not.

THC is a lot stronger than in the past. It also has impurities which we don’t know about its long term effects. Many areas do not test for THC in the blood for levels in accidents, etc. Alcohol is tested. So how does anyone know how many, etc . incidents or accidents occurred from THC use?

NIH was doing studies years ago. Why can’t they tell about their research? I know since I was part of it for six years.

Medically speaking it is apples and oranges.New studies on POT…..1000 people who smoked pot were given brain scans.67 % were abnormal.In a normal response that number would be less than 8%.Now 1000 people who never smoked Pot were tested.Around 9%.But after smoking one joint that number ballooned to 48.3%!!!!!More troubling was after 6 months that test group had an 18% that were STILL showing changes.Those people were specifically studied and remnants of the drug were still found.Very very sobering.Alcohol on the other hand can become dangerous in all kinds of medical scenarios.So i would say(to the layman) that we are dealing with a different class of drugs.Not really comparable.One thing we must have before legalization is a test that can be administered by police with a standardized level beyond sobriety tests.Beyond that im sure your Doctor would simply ask ..why do you need something to dumb you down?That robs people of drive.That flattens the senses?I would ask that of anyone who over indulges in any foreign substance.Good news is that with cig smoking becoming illegal everywhere….The same will as a matter of course follow Pot.